On Friday, February 7, we left Malawi for Zambia. We left early in the morning because we had a long drive ahead of us (about 10 hours, give or take) and we also had to cross a border, which could be very time consuming. So we got up in the middle of the night again to be on the road by 5, but the sunrise made it worth it.
Sunrise over Lake Malawi
Thankfully, crossing the border into Zambia didn't take too long (about an hour and a half) and then we were on our way to Chipata. Up until Zambia, we'd really gotten lucky with the weather, especially because we were visiting Africa during the rainy season. It certainly had rained, but it was mostly at night. Our luck changed in Zambia, but thankfully we were staying at a campground in Chipata that had an open air bar and we were able to set up under shelter for cooking and washing.
The campground in Chipata was the first place that I actually saw overt racism for myself since I'd gotten to Africa. While we were hanging out in the bar after dinner, playing card games and being loud, there was an old white man sitting at the bar, bemoaning the state of things in South Africa. He was complaining that people weren't allowed to refer to black people as "monkeys," and he had the audacity to say that not only in a crowded bar but also in front of the bartender, who happened to be black. I knew I wouldn't be able to stay in that bar without saying something and causing some drama (and it was obvious that he was just an old bigot and a complete waste of my time) so I immediately got up and went to my tent, despite it only being about 9pm. But all the long travel days were starting to catch up to me, so after I vented to my tent buddy Katarina about what that racist nincompoop in the bar had been saying (because she, too, was exhausted and had already been lying in the tent when I got there), I fell asleep pretty quickly.
The next day, the rain continued as we got up early for a long travel day again. We left the campsite at 5:45am for a 13 hour travel day to get us to our campground in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. The city traffic contributed to our travel time but it wasn't raining when we got there to set up our tents, which was a relief. However, the rain picked up shortly after and didn't let up through the next day. Camping in the rain is never fun but we all agreed that campground in Lusaka was arguably the worst of the trip, because although it had nice, clean bathrooms, they were really far from our campsite, and walking to and from the shower in the rain and mud kind of defeats the purpose.
If you're kind enough to be reading this blog, then you probably know me, and you know that I'm a pretty easygoing person, and I often have an annoyingly sunny disposition. Largely because that's how I am, I didn't have many bad days on this trip. If you read my Malawi post, you know that the day I spent with Doctor Nick wasn't the best, but even that was already funny to me even at the time. But this last day before we got to Livingstone to see Victoria Falls was really what I would call a bad day.
When Katarina and I woke up at 3:30am (because we were doing the last long haul to get us to Victoria Falls, and it was at least an 8 hour drive), we realized our campsite had flooded overnight. The tents were pretty water resistant, which was a blessing, but by the time we ran our stuff to the truck and took down our tents in a torrential downpour, everyone in our group was wet enough that we could wring out our clothes. We ate breakfast dripping wet and made lunches to bring on the truck, then packed everything into the truck and piled on. Most people attempted to change into dry clothes as soon as we got on (which was easier said than done since just about everything we had was damp at this point) and laid everything out on every surface in an effort to let it dry (which wasn't likely because it was still pouring outside). On our way out of the campground back to the main road, the dirt road was a mess from all the rain, so it was no wonder what happened next.
Just as we settled in to sleep for the first few hours of another very long day, we hit a pothole hard enough that I remember I literally got tossed in the air a little. Turns out one of the airbags over the truck's tire, which kept the body of the truck from resting on and grinding on the wheels, had busted, and despite valiantly spending several hours in the torrential rain (which never let up, of course), our lovely tour director Eva and our wonderful driver Dudu couldn't get the airbag reinflated. Poor Eva, dripping wet, came onto the truck around 11:30am (meaning we'd been sitting on the side of the road for about 6 hours at this point) to tell us she had booked us a bus to get us the rest of the way to Victoria Falls, but there was a catch. Victoria Falls was a meeting point for multiple tours and multiple trucks, so we would be dropping people and adding people and some people would be headed in a different direction. Because of this, there was no guarantee that our (currently broken) truck would be the one carrying us to our next destination, so we had to pack all of our bags and move them onto the bus. Despite this really crappy day, my favorite thing about our group is that everyone took it in stride. The truck was absolute chaos with everyone trying to pack at the same time, belongings strewn everywhere, and as an added delight, everything was wet, but everyone was in good cheer as we tried to get everything stuffed back into bags, and we even played some games while we waited for the bus to arrive.
When the bus arrived, we discovered that Eva had been misled and it was a minibus, so we had to fit 15 plus people on the bus with all of our belongings. Thankfully, I was able to steal some photo evidence from Kate's Instagram so you don't have to imagine what it looked like.
In the minibus after the truck broke down
Our minibus driver then had to double back to get gasoline, so we finally got on the road around 12:30 after having left our campsite (which was probably a mile away) 7 hours earlier. At that point, I admit I was so resigned that I would have been happy if we got to Livingstone before midnight, but I was pleasantly surprised that the minibus could go considerably faster than our big truck could, so we got there around 7pm, nearly 14 hours after we'd originally left our campsite. We quickly set up our tents so that we were having dinner by 7:30 at the onsite restaurant. Katarina and I also decided to upgrade to a permanent tent with beds in it (primarily because I was admittedly so over being wet all the time) so it was actually a good end to a bad day.
The following day, a group of us took a guided tour of Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park in Zambia, the Lozi name for Victoria Falls, which means the Smoke That Thunders. We wore ponchos but the spray coming off the falls still managed to get us so wet that we could've wrung out our clothes (yes, again).
Before we needed ponchos
Pretending to be dementors
Shortly after this, I gave up on wearing my glasses. This photo cracks me up
I couldn't stop laughing from pure joy
Thank God iPhones are water resistant now
I have a video, too, but first let me tell you that Victoria Falls is one and a half times wider than Niagara Falls and twice as tall, which makes it the largest curtain of water in the world. The average flow of water at Victoria Falls is more than a million liters per second. You can see the majesty for yourself in the video below, and the peak water flow was still two months away, which to me is unfathomable.
I get now why it's one of the seven natural wonders of the world. Talk about breathtaking.
Our guide also took us to this platform in a tree before the end of our tour, so that was fun.
That evening, we took another sunset booze cruise, during which it rained almost the entire time and we didn't see a sunset at all, but we did have a ton of fun.
The rain started about 5 minutes after we took this photo
Jason, Katarina and me
We kept the staff entertained by taking over the bar afterwards
On Tuesday, February 11, I actually spent most of the day by myself, just hanging out by the pool at the campground/resort and catching up on my reading. There were so, so many amazing things to do at Victoria Falls, but many of them were either really expensive or stuff I didn't want to do. Some of the braver people on my tour went bungee jumping (a no from me, dog), white water rafting (I'm a weak swimmer and you had to hike into the gorge) and visited Devil's Pool, the pool at the edge of the waterfall where you can hang over the edge (Again, I'm a bad swimmer and prone to falling so also a no), so I spent a lot of that day reading on a lounge chair, while monkeys got disconcertingly close to me.
Monkeys too close for comfort
Sunset on the Zambezi (it actually didn't rain this evening which was nice)
The next day, a group of us walked across the border to Zimbabwe by shelling out the cash to get a Kaza visa, which allowed us into Zimbabwe just for the day before returning back to Zambia so that we could see Victoria Falls from the other side.
View from the bridge connecting Zambia and Zimbabwe
View of the gorge
Devil's Cataract
I rented the poncho again today but didn't really need it (Also, this outfit still wasn't dry from two days earlier so I figured I should just wear it again)
I see what the fuss is about for those Zimbabwe views
Our Zimbabwe group
I had heard that the view of the falls was better from Zimbabwe, which is true, but I honestly enjoyed Zambia more solely because of how close we were, and how ridiculous it was to get absolutely soaked by the spray.
After we explored the Zimbabwe side of the falls, we had lunch at the Victoria Falls Hotel, a gorgeous, swanky resort in the town of Victoria Falls where we got to try wildebeest steaks and crocodile burgers.
Drinking champagne at the Victoria Falls Hotel
For me, the highlight of the day came after lunch. After doing nothing the day before, I decided to splurge on a helicopter ride over the falls, and to say it was incredible would be a huge understatement.
The helicopter taking us over the falls
My first time in a helicopter (Only a little bit excited, obviously)
Breathtaking doesn't even begin to cover it
Got a tiny rainbow!
People actually enjoy whitewater rafting in this gorge
This was our last day at Victoria Falls, so after the helicopter ride we walked back over to Zambia and had a nice dinner at the onsite restaurant. Some people were leaving our tour to go home, others were staying in Africa but headed in a different direction, and those of us going to Cape Town had a border crossing to Botswana the next day.
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